Before we consider the implications of our results for various theories of irony and sarcasm, what can we conclude with regard to the determinants of sarcasm comprehension? First, it seems that the factual status of descriptive statements is highly salient. When a statement is obviously counterfactual to both speaker and listener, then this seems to be sufficient to prompt at least a suspicion of sarcastic intent. In Experiment 1, all of the stories that contained statements that were counterfactual elicited relatively high rates of sarcasm judgments. Approximately 36% of these statements were judged to be sarcastic, whereas less than 3% of factually accurate statements were.